Another barrier to selling in the EU
NEW Germany - Extended Producer Responsibility
I see another new box has appeared on the dashboard this morning, this time in relation to EPR in Germany. There just seems to be more and more compliance requirements for selling internationally which is why we have only listed on UK since Brexit. Where will it end?
0 replies
Seller_ae51e0CJoHqCX
I read this as just for electricals at the moment. I think this is an extension of the existing EPR that is already in place. I personally don’t have a battery in anything so hopefully I can just ignore it.
The issue with these things is that most people just fill a bit of paper in and forget about it, I don’t see how this is being proactive in doing anything constructive.
Much more bureaucracy is on its way though and the answer to where will it end? It’s not going to end, it’s going to get worse and before you know it just like VAT services, Amazon will invent a department for compliance and charge you a monthly fee for it.
Seller_iBWoOylkVZzy8
Introducing new schemes is all well and good but they should work. Since July last year when IOSS my customers are charged tax at the point of sale ie Amazon and then the same tax when the delivery company delivers. If it worked I would not mind but when it doesn’t we’re the people that are punished by Amazon. It’s a disgrace how sellers are treated!
Seller_Iti0OkAyMPN7I
Seems to be aimed a £1 million turnover / waste of 25 tonnes or more for the UK EPR
Who needs to take action
The regulations will apply to all UK organisations that handle and supply packaging.
You must take action to comply if all the following apply:
- you’re an individual business, subsidiary or group (but not a charity)
- you have an annual turnover of £1 million or more (based on your most recent annual accounts)
- you’re responsible for over 25 tonnes of packaging in a calendar year (January to December)
- you carry out any of the packaging activities listed
Packaging activities
- packaging own-brand products to sell to UK consumers
- using a third party to package and sell own-brand goods to UK consumers
- using ‘transit packaging’ to protect goods during transport so they can be sold to UK consumers
- importing own-brand and third-party packaged products into the UK to sell to consumers, unless doing so on behalf of a third party (such as a supermarket)
- allowing third parties based outside the UK to sell packaged products or empty packaging through an online marketplace that you own
- hiring or loaning out reusable packaging to UK third parties
- making and then selling empty packaging to third-party organisations that do not need to take action under the regulations
Seller_OvNSG0AO7kG9Z
It is the big boys like Amazon that need to review their packaging. Order a small item get a HUGE box most times, waste waste waste.
Seller_l78koE9kGCu59
This made me double check all my .de listings were still at ‘0’ inventory level - since the German packaging policies a while back. I’ve long since removed all my .de listings and have tried to remove .de completely from my account several times.
However, with this new ‘Yellow Box Warning’ popping up this morning I tried once more to bin off Germany for good. I now notice that it states that “sellers are unable to delete a region from their account”. It goes on to say that we should simply not list in the region we wish to remove and this would essentially be the same as deleting.
It won’t be the same though, will it?
I while back, 19th April to be precise, I tried to rectify a similar issue and adjusted all the .PL inventory to ‘0’. A few days later found that when I went back to my.UK inventory page that by doing so I had inadvertently set all of those were also set to ‘0’ too.
I didn’t subscribe to.PL and certainly never uploadd any actual FBM stock to the local .PL site so I believed I was doing the right thing by removing them.
If the site wasn’t on my account then I would still have the 150+ lines listed today on .UK for UK buyers to buy. However, I haven’t relisted them and instead I’m just letting them sell vai eBay (they were dupe listed across the both platforms), as I had not the chance to reconcile them to ensure all items were still physichally here. If I were simply able to delted .PL from my account this wouldn’t have happened and Amazon would have been earning lots of lovely commission from the sales of those 150+ lines.
That’s my arguement anyway. Why have the region on the account which MAY cause an issue when I / the seller doesn’t want to ever sell there? Be it.de or .PL or wherever.
Infuriating to say the least.
Seller_yE7wQLht2Ut2g
Here in Northern Ireland we are still in the customs union so a lot of the red tape for us does not apply the EPR and lucid number does effect us. What killed us off in Amazon Europe was the policy of allowing any customer to claim any goods priced under 25 euros as a free gift by simply clicking the return button (German customers caught on to that freebie very quickly) I lost over 700 euros of goods with customers buying and within 48 hours of dispatch clicking return button getting the automatic refund and the goods. And as 85% of my inventory fell into this zone it has wiped out my International sales. Before the freebie Policy I sold as much into Germany as I did into the UK
Seller_MKi6wqe68YZuu
This is a national thing, not an EU thing, and we’ve had plenty of warning it was coming.
France is doing it too.
Seller_TD8Fcx0YSQnbq
@Retro_Emporium What should we do?
They make everything harder to sell…
